


Don't You Cry No More

by sixtysevenlmpala



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Brother Feels, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hunt Gone Wrong, Hurt Sam Winchester, M/M, Protective Dean, Weecest, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixtysevenlmpala/pseuds/sixtysevenlmpala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Sam gets badly hurt on a hunt, he doesn’t cry.</p><p>Dean does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't You Cry No More

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, I just really wanted bb!Sam getting hurt and Dean freaking out because it's the first time he's ever seen him injured quite so bad and can't lose him and codependency feels. So. This is what happened.
> 
> Enjoy?

The first time Sam gets badly hurt on a hunt, he doesn’t cry.

Dean does.

***

There’s blood everywhere, fucking – _everywhere_ and Dean’s screaming Sam’s name, yelling it right in his face and shaking him by the collar of his jacket like he would if they were arguing and he was trying to snap some sense into him, but he’s not, he’s not, he’s just trying to keep him _awake_.

‘Cause Sammy is fourteen years old, and he doesn’t deserve to die tonight.

“Sammy, Sammy, you can hear me, right? You can hear me, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay, we’re gonna patch you right up, Sam, you hear? Sam?” Dean rambles, eyes wild and searching Sam’s slack face, fingers cold and shaking and pressing bluntly to the point on his neck where his pulse still thrums gloriously beneath his delicate, unblemished skin.

It’s weak and slow, but it’s _there_ , and Dean clings to it like it’s his very own lifeline.

“ _Dad!_ ” Dean yells, rising up on his knees and desperately looking around. John ran after the werewolf as soon as it—as soon as it had happened, barking at Dean as he dashed away to _stay with your brother, do not leave him._ Dean shouts his name again, hears nothing in return but leaves rustling overhead and oblivious crickets in the long grass. He feels like a little kid again, hopeless and helpless and completely forgetting every single thing Dad had every taught him about emergencies like this. It’s all forgotten when his brother is lying unconscious and bleeding in his grip. "No, no, no-no-no-no."

Dean’s other hand is pressed tight and desperate to the gash in Sam’s stomach, the one that’s gushing blood at what seems to Dean to be a gallon a minute. One casual, flippant slash of that goddamn were’s claws was all it took – three jagged wounds torn into Sam’s abdomen like he was made of paper.

Right now, lolling flimsily in Dean’s arms, he almost feels like he is.

Dean lays him carefully on the mess of twigs and undergrowth and quickly strips off his plaid shirt, his skin completely forgetting to shiver at the cold air as he holds it against the wound, winding the material awkwardly around Sam’s body so it’s pressed a little tighter. He swallows thickly, against tears, against panic, against the urge to just lay down and die with him. Instead, he wrenches his fingers away from Sam’s pulse – and even that makes him short of breath, the loss of that comforting _thump-thump, thump-thump_ that tells him Sammy’s still in there – to fumble for his phone.

They usually avoid doing this. It’s only when it’s—when it’s serious. When they don’t have a choice.

“Hello? Yeah, yeah I need an ambulance, I need it real quick. God, please, it’s my brother, you gotta help, he’s gonna die. He’s gonna die, he-he’s, uh, something attacked him, an animal attack, he’s b-bleeding so much, I’m tryin’ to stop it but—“

“Okay, calm down, I need you to tell me where you are, son,” the tinny male voice says patiently, and Dean barely hears it.

“The—the woods,” he answers, dumb in his frantic state, then, “Brixdale Woods.”

“Okay. Just stay calm, and keep talking to your brother,” and Dean rolls his eyes at that, exasperated, because why the fuck wouldn’t he be talking to him considering this might be the last chance he gets? “The ambulance will be there as soon as possible.”

“You’d better fuckin’ hurry,” Dean growls into the phone, tone full of sudden menace as heat prickles behind his eyelids. He cuts the call off with trembling fingers and cups Sam’s face in one hand, the other finding Sam’s limp fingers and lacing his own through them. “Sammy? C’mon, little brother, you can hear me, right? Just—Jesus, say somethin’, squeeze my hand, punch me in the arm, _anything_.”

Sam is motionless, his head rolling back lifelessly when Dean lets go of it, and Dean chokes down a sob, helpless eyes darting around. He drops his forehead down to Sammy’s chest, and his heartbeat fills his ears like a melody. “You’re gonna be fine,” he whispers, a mantra, “you’re gonna be just fine.”

A choked-off whimper and a tiny flex of Sam’s thin fingers against Dean’s own, and Dean whips his head up, furiously trying to blink away the blurriness of tears in his eyes so as to scrutinise Sam’s face even further. “Sammy?” he asks. “Sam. Sammy, hey, sweetheart, can you hear me?”

Another twitch of his fingers, an almost-imperceptible quirk at the corner of his chapped lips, and Dean’s voice stumbles over a laugh, giddy with the simple fact that Sam knows he’s there, understands his words.

“That’s it, hey, I’m right here, little brother. Right here, Sammy. I’m not gonna leave, okay, and there’s an ambulance on its way, it’s gonna be here real soon, Sammy, then we’re gonna get you all better,” he said, words tripping over each other in their rush to get out, and Dean thinks he sees Sam’s eyes flutter, but it might just be the tears in his eyes. “Sam?” he whispers, and Sam’s hand goes limp once more in Dean’s.

Dean curses under his breath, pressing his bundled-up shirt tighter to Sam’s stomach, watching helplessly as his baby brother’s blood soaks the material. He looks so pale, lips slightly blue from the cold, and Dean lays himself carefully over him, sharing his body heat and wishing he could breathe his life directly into him. God knows Sam deserves it a lot more than he does. His hands cradle Sam’s head, stroking through his hair, and they come back bloody – _must have bumped it when he got thrown off,_ _that makes one head wound, the gash on his stomach, both still bleeding, plus the broken ankle, possible dislocated shoulder,_ Dean catalogues obsessively in his head.

Until the ambulance gets there, he lies there just like that, holding his brother close, Sam’s blood all over him but he doesn’t even register it, only concentrating on the constant mantra of Sam’s name and whispered pleas for him to hold on.

***

“Son, you need to let us get to him.”

Dean glowers at the paramedic, because they can get to Sam just _fine_ without him moving from his side. Begrudgingly, he shifts away, shuffling in his crouched position, but he refuses to drop Sam’s hand, clinging to him like _he’s_ the only thing keeping Sam alive, because for all he knows, he might be.

“Is he gonna be okay?” he asks, gruff and blunt. “Is he gonna die?”

“We’re gonna do everything we can,” one of the paramedics says as two others come running with a stretcher. “He’s bleeding very profusely—“

“I can fucking see that,” Dean snarls.

“—so we’re gonna take him to hospital, patch him up. He’ll probably need a blood transfusion, and we’ll need to check him over for broken bones and internal injuries, okay?”

Then they’re lifting Sam onto a stretcher and Dean wants to scream at them for not being careful enough with him, he’s fragile, he’s special, _please_ take care of him. “He’s got a broken ankle, and his shoulder’s dislocated I think,” he tells them in a rush, and they just nod, carrying Sam through the trees and up a grass verge to the ambulance.

“I’m coming with him,” he says, no doubts about it.

“You got any parents with you, kid?”

Dean purses his lips and exhales sharply, thinking of John chasing down the hunt of the week instead of being here with the son it injured. “No.”

The paramedic nods and gives him a sympathetic smile. “Alright. Better you hop in with him, then, son.”

Dean already is, clambering up into the back, arms immediately reaching out for Sam. He clasps Sam’s hand tight in his own, perching on the bench next to Sam’s stretcher and watching as he’s hooked up to several bleeping machines, a clear packet of a liquid Dean doesn’t understand being attached by a tube to Sam’s skinny wrist.

He drops his head down, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose as he whispers softly into Sam’s ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay. We’re going to the hospital, Sammy, they’re gonna take care of you. I’m right here, alright, I’ve gotcha, you feel me?” he asks, squeezing Sam’s hand hard enough to crack yet another bone.

No response.

The paramedic’s speaking to him, telling him what to say and how to best get Sam to hear him, but it filters through Dean’s ears like he’s underwater – and he wonders if that’s what it’s like for Sam, or if it’s more like Sam’s buried under six feet of earth, with only the silence and darkness of the ground to keep him company no matter how loud Dean shouts.

***

They take him away from Dean once they reach the hospital, run with his stretcher along an endless stretch of white lino, through countless double doors – and Dean runs with them, unwilling to let them steal him, untrusting of their hands on him without him there to oversee it, but eventually they come to a door where Sam is wheeled through and Dean is held back by strong hands on his chest, a voice telling him that _you’ve gotta let ‘em do their job, kid._

“That’s my _brother_ —“ he chokes out, trying for fierce but it doesn’t work as his throat closes up around a sob.

But then he’s alone with only a small window through which to watch people in coloured scrubs and white coats surround Sam, and in an environment like this where everything is pure and gleaming white and silver, the bright red of Sam’s spilt blood is all too stark to Dean’s eyes.

One of the white coats moves between Sam and the window, blocking Dean’s narrow view, and he bows his head, leaning his forehead against the glass, and sobs a silent prayer.

***

“He’s stable.”

That’s all Dean hears.

The doctor is filling him in on everything they’ve done to him, and the protective part of his subconscious files the information away for safekeeping, words like _transfusion_ and _stitches_ and _plaster cast_ and _no internal injuries_ and _general anaesthetic._ He knows he should be listening better, though, and plus she’spretty hot, all blonde hair and foxy green eyes, but that one word is all he focuses on. _Stable._

“Can I—“ he swallows, clears his throat, rolls his shoulders back to at least _try_ to act like a man. “Can I see him?”

She nods. “He’s still sleeping, but you can go in. We don’t expect him to wake up for another few hours, but who knows, maybe you’ll get a rise out of him. You boys seem pretty close.”

“We are,” Dean mutters. “Thank you—for saving him. Really. He’s, uh. He’s kinda all I got sometimes.”

“That’s what we do, right?” The doctor smiles at him. “It’s okay, I get it. He’ll be alright now. Go on, get in there.”

Dean ducks his head and brushes past her, pushing open the swing door and walking straight to Sam’s side. He looks so small, hospital gown swamping his lean frame, his hair fanned out around his head like a dark halo as the sheets swallow him up. His skin is still abnormally pale, a detail which Dean doesn’t miss and which makes his stomach twist a little with worry, but there’s a hint of blush in his cheeks, where some of the puppy fat is still clinging on for dear life, and Dean smiles.

“Hey, Sammy,” he murmurs, reaching out to brush Sam’s hair off his forehead as he sits in the chair by the bed, pulling it closer so that his knees are squashed uncomfortably against the frame, but he doesn’t notice. “Gave me quite the scare back there, y’know that?”

He sighs, breath coming out a little shaky. Jesus, he feels like his pulse is only just slowing, now that he’s watching Sam’s own heartbeat spiking rhythmically on a screen. Slowly, he pulls back the sheets that are currently tucked right up around Sam’s neck – Sam doesn’t like sleeping like that, feels too trapped, Dean always had to sneak in and tuck him in all over again after John did it too tight – and then he just keeps going, biting his lip as he sees the bandages around his stomach through the opening in the front of the hospital gown. They’ve got his arm in a sling, too, and his foot is set in plaster.

Dean leans down to drop a soft kiss on top of the bandages, over the place where a blessedly tiny spot of blood has seeped through the white cotton, and he squeezes the hand of Sam’s uninjured arm. “Thought I was gonna lose you, Christ. _Christ,_ Sam, you don’t even—I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I was tryn’a think how I’d get by without ya, and I just—couldn’t.” He strokes his thumb gently over Sam’s hand, combing his fingers of his other hands through Sam’s soft hair. “Don’t ever fuckin’ do that again.”

Suddenly, there’s a small blip in Sam’s heart rate on the monitor, and Dean’s own heart answers with an anxious lurch before he realises that Sam’s head is stirring on the pillow.

“Sam? Sam, you hear me, baby?” he asks, voice soft. “You’re in the hospital – I’m right here, it’s okay, you’re okay.”

Sam’s eyelids flutter a little but don’t open; his fingers, though, squeeze at Dean’s hand – just once, quick and urgent – and a tiny sound escapes from his dry lips.

“Sam, Sammy, hey,” he murmurs, eyes wide, rising from his seat to hover over Sam, stroking his knuckles along Sam’s cheekbone. “Hey, it’s okay, just stay still, sweetheart. What is it, what’s wrong?”

With what seems like a great effort, Sam’s eyes struggle open, holding Dean’s gaze steadily through the slits of his heavy lids, and he whispers, “I.” That’s it, just one letter, but it makes Dean heart ache in all the best ways.

“Don’t—don’t try an’ speak if it’s too hard, Sam, just rest,” he tells him, voice wrung out and weary.

“I—“ Sam tries again, eyes falling closed once more, hand still clutching at Dean’s. “I’m— s... sorry. Dean,” he finally manages, the words grinding roughly out of his dry mouth, no more than a whisper.

“It’s okay,” Dean mumbles fiercely, blinking back insistent tears and cupping Sam’s face. “It’s okay. Don’t apologise. It wasn’t you, Sam, okay?”

Sam’s head turns toward Dean’s voice, leaning into his touch, and Dean leans down to kiss his forehead, careful and gentle. There’s a pull on Dean’s leather jacket, then, and Dean looks down between them to see Sam’s hand blindly reaching for him, clinging to him. “S... sorry,” Sam whispers again, and Dean shakes his head abruptly, even though Sam can’t see.

“No,” he mutters. “No, Sam. It wasn’t your fault, okay? I should’a been lookin’ out for you. S’my job, right? Take care of my pain in the ass little brother?”

“Don’t—“ Sam breathes when Dean starts to pull away.

“I’m gonna be right here.”

 “Dean,” he whispers, sounding lost.

Heart clenching, Dean places a chastely soft kiss upon Sam’s lips. That has Sam’s fingers curling tighter in his jacket, keeping him right where he is, but really, Dean never had any plans of going anywhere. Sam lapses into silent, steady breathing, and for a moment Dean thinks he’s fallen back to sleep, but then his eyes are struggling against the anaesthetic, opening just enough for him to look urgently into Dean’s through the slits of his eyelids. “What?” Dean asks quietly.

With some difficulty and ignoring Dean’s protests, wincing every now and then, Sam shuffles around in his bed, eventually creating a gap between himself and the edge. “Ca... can. Can you,” he mumbles, and Dean’s eyes flick between Sam’s and the empty space in his bed.

“We—I can’t do that here, Sammy,” he murmurs, and Sam squeezes his fingers, needy.

“Please,” he whispers, eyelids falling shut, “s-stay, sleep in here with me. Need—Dean.”

Dean glances over to the door, then lets out a short sigh and hauls himself over the silver frame of the bed, careful not to dislodge any of the tubes still attached to Sam’s body. It’s a tight squeeze but he manages it, lying on his side with one arm gently curled around Sam’s middle, avoiding his stitches. “Go back to sleep, Sammy,” he says, kissing the top of his head. “I’m right here with ya.”

“S’better,” Sam whispers, sounding more than a little out of it. “I was... was so scared.”

Dean curls himself protectively around his brother, burying his face in his neck. “It’s okay,” he says, “so was I.”

Dean gives a quiet sniffle, and Sam shifts drowsily next to him. “You cryin’?” Sam asks, voice thin and sweet.

“No,” Dean mutters gruffly, “m’fine. Shut up, Sammy.”

***

When John turns up at the hospital and Sam’s discharged, Dean bats John’s hands away when he tries to help Sam to the Impala, insisting on doing it himself. He ignores John’s casual order to _get in front, Dean_ in favour of climbing onto the backseat with Sam, letting him lean against his side, snuffly little puffs of breath against his neck as he snoozes. He only half-listens to John’s tale of how he ganked that werewolf son of a bitch, preferring to close his eyes and listen to Sam’s heartbeat – _thump-thump_ under his fingers where they’re pressed obsessively into Sam’s wrist.

“Are you okay?” Sam mumbles.

Dean nods once, quick and tight and stubbornly silent, and holds him closer.

***

Yeah, okay, the first time Sam gets badly hurt on a hunt, Dean cries.

Hell if he’ll ever admit to _that_ , though.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, feel free to leave a comment/kudos if you liked! :-)


End file.
